58) Super Sunday, 2/19: 4:40
– 4:50 AM – “Rats Out’a
the Walls!”
As Big Sonny’s head mercenary sank, weeping, to his knees beside
the great, ruined Dominator atop his crushed employer (and paycheck signer),
even the overhanging looters… perhaps sensing an enormous turn of the cards in
their struggle… melted away into the numerous doors emptying onto the catwalks
snaking hither and thither above the One World Mall. On an inexplicable impulse, Vicki Gordon took
Craig’s left hand in her own, placed her right palm firmly on his behind and
shoved…
“Now!” she
whispered.
“Now what?”
“Now, we have a
chance to get out of this place. To live…”
So confident
earlier, so primed with teenaged impulses, Craig Synch now stammered, looked
down, afraid for himself and hating his humiliation. “I’d be fired,” he finally said.
Vicki made a
performance of sniffing the rancid perfume of the One World Mall, creeping in
under the heavy metal shutters. “Smell
that? It’s burning, outside. Do you want to be fired, fired on or on fire?”
“OK…” Craig said,
hesitantly, “but where do we go?”
“Up!” And, as Craig glared at her as if Vicki were
a madwoman, she added “I spend three lunch hours a week at FairPlay,
on the rock climbing wall, and I climb on weekends, so you can go first and
I’ll spot you… unless you’re afraid of being shown up by… a girl…”
Affronted by the
charge, Craig replied “I ain’t afraid…”
“Then go!” she
pointed.
The eyes of
Giga-Plex were all still fixed on its founder and CEO, squashed like some
wicked witch of Waco beneath the remains of the giant Romanian television,
human blood and the mysterious plasma oozing together in common rivulets that
hissed and crackled with baleful Transylvanian lightnings. Captain Capps had finally risen and begun
pacing, attempting to activate his dead cellphone – Mark Tenison simply stared
at the spot. Effie Lou lay sprawled on
the floor, atop a fallen pile of DVDs and Faubourg, the fixer, sat wearily atop
a boxed forty-four inch plasma. He’d
grabbed a pistol from one of the dead invaders, holding it listlessly with the
other hand over his chest – face white as Elmer’s Glue – his thoughts a
cesspool of lost money, turmoil and suicide.
The rest… salesclerks, cashiers and stockroom help, Big Sonny’s clowns,
musicians and the other Giga-Grrrlz, Rae and Crystal,
and the delegation from the FCC were also staring at scene of the catastrophe,
at Henry the Robot… wheels hopelessly entangled in the mangled innards of the
Dominator as he bucked and swayed in place, bleating “How may I help you?… may
I help you!” or raising their gaze to eye-level, at the lesser projection, LCD
and plasma sets of the remaining henge. His devil’s duty done, Evan Augsberg had disappeared, replaced by notices and Emergency
Alert footage from across the country; chaos and death and little red flags…
Providence, Milwaukee, Denver… and a flock of overnight second and third-tier
newscasters, braying for attention on second and third rate televisions…
Climbing their
own tier of televisions, finding easy hand and footholds in the supporting
shelving, Craig replied: “This ain’t bad…”
“Helluva lot easier than rock climbing,” Vicki grunted. “These racks are bolted into the wall, and
there isn’t anything else to come tumbling down on top of us… we hope…”
Fred Faubourg,
eyes wet and blurry with self-pitying tears, looked up, color returning to his
cheeks. “There’s a couple of the
bastards. Bastards! You’ve just murdered the greatest ambassador
of American entrepreneurial genius since Henry Ford…”
His quavering
tones brought a look of sympathy from Captain Capps – who also noted that the
two apparent Giga-vested looters… probably hiding behind a beam… were trying to
get out of Giga-Plex, hence, not
worth his own precious ammunition.
“Technically,
they’re not the killers… it was that other guy,” Lester told the lobbyist, “or
the Romanians, or the robot but, if it rocks your world, mister, you take the shot…”
So Fred Faubourg,
a mediocre duck hunter with limited handgun experience, rose, aimed and began
firing at the two fleeing apparent zombie deserters, backs necessarily
turned. His first shot was a lucky near
miss on Craig, the bullet so rattling the metal stanchions that he let go with
one hand…
“Suck it up!”
Vicki hissed. “Only six feet more to
go…”
“But they’re
shooting at us…”
“If they miss,”
she admonished him, “keep going. If they
hit… well, nothing we can do about that.”
So Craig rediscovered the handhold and continued climbing. A second shot went wild, then a third. Craig reached the catwalk, pulled himself up
and started crawling away, but the fourth shot struck Vicki, who gave a yelp of
pain, momentarily losing, then recovering, her grip as the corporate vest slid
off her shoulder and fluttered to the floor.
Grinning broadly, Faubourg took a more careful aim and fired… but heard
only an empty click. Watching the
slender figure swaying halfway onto the catwalk, he turned to Capps with a
rueful smile…
“Think I scored a
hit. Sounded like a girl… wonder what
the fuck she was doing, up there with
all them other maniacs? Gimme some more ammo!”
“Same as the
rest,” deduced the Screaming Eagle.
“Came by to shop with her husband or boyfriend… that other one, up
there… maybe got stuck in line, got pissed off, maybe heard over the radio or
TV that there was a riot going on and wanted in on the excitement. Or maybe just wanted a free television to
replace the one the government took away the other night…”
“I think they
work here,” Fred said, pointing to the yellow vest as it fluttered to the floor
atop the face of a dead looter. “Worked
here, I mean. One more round in the
chamber… just one more… and I’da had her head on my
wall…” Faubourg lamented. “Couldn’t you
let me borrow your gun?”
“Sorry, Mac, I gotta conserve ammo, and,” Captain Capps added, “those as
are goin’ the other way aren’t the problem, it’s
those coming down that are. And they’re not zombies, you know? They’re just Americans. They’ve been lied to and ripped off… some of
‘em have seen their good jobs disappearing, their cars and houses repossessed,
their wives and children hate them and now the government’s taking away their
Superbowl…”
“Which that fuckin’
pussy of a President gave back…” snarled Vern Cooth
who, with Tenison, had rushed to the lobbyist’s defense.
“Yeah, but they
don’t know it. Well, looks like my job
is toast…” Lester added…
Sheer terror
coursed through the store manager.
“You’re not going to desert us?”
“I would, if I
could,” Capps explained, “but I can’t.
Everything about this deal has been fucked up from the beginning. So I’m going to try to stay alive, which is
about the best that can be expected, under the circumstances… isn’t it… maybe
keep a few other people alive in the process.
Maybe even you… if you co-operate…”
Above, Vicki
grasped a rails of the catwalk as Craig hesitated… then scurried back.
“Were you hit?”
he felt obligated to ask, uselessly.
“In the ankle,”
Vicki explained, trying to pull herself up, but failing. “Fuck – it hurts, I can’t make it…”
“Hold on.”
Craig peered out
over the rail… and straight down into the astonished, then enraged face of Mark
Tenison… he grasped her wrists and pulled her up through the rails, onto the
catwalk…
“Can you walk?”
“I can
crawl. Fuck!” Vicki grunted. “Better off, make a smaller target this way…”
Below Mark
Tenison pointed, screaming at his disloyal workers and berating the disloyal
Captain…
“They’re from here!
Employees! Traitors…” he screeched, “…they’re getting away! Deserters! Shoot them!
That’s an order… shoot them!”
“You don’t give orders,” Capps replied contemptuously. “The only man who could is dead. And I’m not wasting ammo shooting the
wounded, let alone a couple of your kids with initiative to save their own
asses…”
Tenison slapped
his forehead… hard… was everybody going crazy?...without
realizing he still held the empty pistol and exuding a yelp of anguish. What the hell had happened to loyalty, to teamwork? And then, noticing that one of the dead
looters in the pile of sacrifices to the wall of televisions was holding a gun
in his cold, dead fingers, he lunged for it, aimed, fired…
“Traitors!” he
kept hollering. “Traitors!”
Craig and Vicki
kept crawling for their lives while bullets flew above their heads until, at
last, the manager was out of ammo again – an oblong welt rising on his
forehead. They lurched through an open,
creaking door above the Sputnik Station, then tumbled into a corridor full of a
half-dozen muttering zombies holding black plastic bags of loot, several of
whom muttered “Hey!” as Craig looked up, apprehensive…
One had just
crawled up from Kravjak’s, wearing three dress
shirts, one over the other – pricetags still dangling
from the sleeves. He glanced at Vicki’s
foot, saying: “That looks bad…”
Another zombie,
holding three fishing poles in his left hand, disagreed. “Not too bad, otherwise you couldn’t even
crawl. Hurt much?”
Vicki
nodded, “A little. Anybody happen to have any disinfectant?”
“Better!” another
wallcrawler said, holding up a 1.75 liter bottle of Grey Goose vodka from his
stash.
“Hey, that’s good
stuff,” another in a beige sweater, like one of those that the deceased
children’s host, Mister Rogers, used to wear.
“You can’t…”
“It’s mine,”
replied the man with the vodka. “ I can do what I want.”
“That’s the
American way,” agreed Pricetags.
The wound was bloody, but not crippling… Vicki screamed when the
expensive liquor was splattered on her ankle while Pricetags
removed a white shirt from his bag and tore it in strips…
“Thought you were
gonna use that to look for a job,” sneered Mister Rogers.
“As if that’d pan
out in this econ’my…” Pricetags
muttered, “hey, I kin get plenty of others…”
With her ankle bound
and disinfected, Vicki could hop… if not exactly walk... with the aid of the
stoutest fishing pole that another of the looters had snapped in half and
surrendered to her. Along the corridor
came three other young men, wearing red bandannas that marked them as members
of the Nation. They carried guns and
bulging plastic bags of their own…
“Chill out, we ain’t here to jack… that’s them other thugz
down there doin’ that shit. Hardasses from the
Southeast…”
“They get you…”
asked a kid who was no older than fifteen, “or was it them bastards in the
store? Anybody got anything to eat?”
Fishing Pole
reached into his bag. “Got into the
candy store… doin’ Easter a little early, this year…”
his voice trailed off…
He pulled a giant
white chocolate cross out of his bag, removed it from the festive, holiday box,
and began breaking off pieces while the remains of the Grey Goose was passed
round…
“Din’t know they sold white chocolate,” Pricetags
said, cautiously. “So, where you
headed…”
“Heard there
might be tires left in that garage,” said the leader of the pack, who was
wearing a new jersey with the number 87 – belonging to the Team’s receiver
Randle, hero of Green Bay. “Mine are
about worn down to nothin’…”
“Might be, but I
heard that the place was on fire. Feels
hot, that way,” Mister Rogers pointed down the corridor… “smells…”
“Man, this is
fucked…” allowed the third member of the Nation, “ain’t
nobody getting’ into the Giga-Plex. All
I wanted to do was cop a plasma, kick back and watch the game…”
Vicki looked up –
Craig shook his head…
Number 87 was
still mad. “Like I thought I was gonna
get one of them rebates they’re givin’ out after I hadda quit work at the chicken place to take care of
Granma, then they tell me I don’t get one ‘cause I’m not workin’,
like I’m a bum? She can’t even clean
herself no more, so I have to do that… can’t watch her programs now… not
really, just sitting and staring… and I’m
a bum?”
“They don’t need us anymore,” said Fishing Poles. “Politicians had their way, they’d gas us…
like those dogs an’ cats nobody wants.
Say they love their middle class, ain’t gonna
be no more middle class anymore… gonna be millionaires, a few, and then the
millions that nobody needs, living off the land.” He hoisted his liberated sporting gear with a
toothy smile. “I’m goin’
down to the shore, past the naval base - gonna be one of those survivors living
off the land. Or uh, the water. Eatin’ fish…”
“Yeah, but then…
uh, meanwhile… first, how do we get out of here?” Craig wondered aloud.
“Hee-heeeah!” said the zombie presently swigging vodka. “Ain’t you been
listening to Evan Augsberg, boy? Nobody getting out of here, we gonna
burn! Burn for our sins, everybody’s sins comin’
out like…” and
he pointed to one of the luminescent red rats from Petworld,
scampering down the catwalk, “like them rats… rats… from outa the walls…”
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
VISIT THESE OTHER
GENERISIS SERIAL ABOMINATIONS…
THE GOLDEN DAWN BLACK HELICOPTERS